Step by Step
by scorchedtrees
Summary: AU: She smiles at him and decides he is the one she will convince to set her free. Rivetra.


_A/N: This is based on an original short story I started a few years ago and never completed. Then I wrote it with Rivetra and… yeah._

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><p>At first they keep her blindfolded.<p>

There is not much to see in the back of the wagon but they make sure she does not see any of it anyway. She can feel the hard wood of the cart through the thin scratchy rug spread across the floor; she hears the telltale clink of coins shifting in their sacks and the dull thud of wooden crates thumping against each other with bumps and jolts in the road . The air that blows through the curtain in the back gets a little chillier every day, telling her they are going north, but other than that she is given no clues as to where they are taking her.

They only untie the cloth over her eyes every time they stop for a break, and then every man she sees has a scarf covering his face, hiding his features. She can see their eyes though, dark and full of ill intent, the weathered lines of their foreheads, the varying shades of their hair, and when she hears their murmured voices she closes her eyes and tries to pinpoint their accents.

Sometimes they leer or make various rude comments at her during the short breaks, but no one comes too close or does anything else and she is grateful—she has no idea who they are working for or what their precise orders are, but one of the instructions seems to be that she remain unharmed. One of the men follows her around when they let her walk with her hands unbound, and at first she thinks it's to keep watch over her but then she sees the way he eyes the others and she realizes he is in charge of protecting her as well.

"What's your name?" she asks him on the second day. He is short, hardly taller than her, no gray in his hair and no furrows creasing his brow so he must not be too old, but something about the way he carries himself makes her think he is older than he looks. She likes his eyes though—they are a flat shade of gray, perpetually bored, assessing, and lacking harmful intent.

He ignores her, so she asks again. His gaze darts to her and she can see the scowl that must be beneath the scarf reflected in those gray irises.

"You shouldn't ask questions," he tells her, but it is enough. She smiles at him, the man who must have grown up in lower Sina judging from the way he clips his consonants and draws out his vowels, and decides he is the one she will convince to set her free.

On the fourth day they must be far away enough from anyplace recognizable that her blindfold is taken off during travel. Her bodyguard—or whoever he is—removes the cloth, his fingers nowhere near as harsh as she expected, and she blinks a few times at the sudden influx of light and color. It is late afternoon, the sun's rays dark gold amidst the long shadows of items in the wagon, and after her eyes adjust she sees he has moved back to sitting at the entrance, sharpening a knife and occasionally contemplating the moving ground outside like he wants to jump out to meet it.

"Thank you," she says, and when he stares at her, what little she can see of his face is incredulous.

"Why the hell are you thanking me?"

He must have killed before, she thinks, studying his strong arms and posture and the deft way his fingers work at his blade. He doesn't seem to be the type to take pleasure in the act of killing though, and he has never once looked at her in a way that suggests he wants anything to do with her, good or bad, and she likes that.

"You didn't have to remove my blindfold."

He stares at her a moment longer, then returns to sharpening his blade. "Courtesies won't get you anywhere, princess."

The kingdom is large, dozens of small roads branching off the main one that winds through all the major cities, and though all the forests they pass look the same, she thinks they're traveling the path that leads to the Wall up north. Hardly anyone visits the wilderness anymore, preferring to stay within the confines of guaranteed safety, and she wonders what exactly her kidnappers are up to; if they wanted gold they didn't have to take her so far. Just getting out of the capital would have been good enough before sending a ransom.

Then again, perhaps they're just being careful. Trying to kidnap a member of the royal family is already high treason, regardless of the success of such an endeavor, and it wouldn't do to have their heads removed before collecting the money.

The roads this high north are mostly deserted, but sometimes they pass other wagons or single riders. A few words of greeting are often called out and her companion always stands at such times, watching her carefully, ready to stop her if she tries to scream or jump out. She rolls her eyes the first time he does this; as if she could get anywhere far with the ropes on her wrists (they're retied every morning and night so she doesn't try getting out of them unless a realistic chance to escape presents itself), and she has seen him twirling his blade around; he knows how to use it. If all the men do too, she would basically be sentencing any possible saviors of hers to death.

The fifth day they stop and make camp; most of the men leave, heading into the small town with pouches of gold, and Petra surmises they will be returning much later, likely drunk, or possibly even the next morning. She wonders if her friend—as she has taken to calling him in her head—will go with them, but to her disappointment, he stays behind.

"You don't want to go drinking and whoring with them?" she asks as they sit by the campfire outside. Her flimsy dress does nothing to keep the chill from settling into her bones, but they let her have a cloak and a blanket at night and the flames are warm, sparks leaping up from the stones and dried wood as if to caress her face.

Perhaps it is simply the firelight dancing in his eyes, but she could swear he looks amused. "Didn't know princesses used such words," he says. He sits across from her, carving a piece of wood; she can't discern the shape yet but he seems to know what he's doing. His fingers are always busy.

"Well, what do you expect me to say? _Are you sure you would not like to accompany your friends to the town a half mile yonder, kind sir, and perhaps visit a local tavern or an institution of pleasure? _What a waste of breath."

He snorts at that but does not say anything else. She briefly wonders how long it would take her to get her hands free of the rope—they are tied together loosely so she can feed herself at mealtimes, but not much else—and reach him to get it around his windpipe, but then she discards the idea; there are still a few men remaining in camp and besides, she needs to find out exactly what they are planning with the king's only child.

When she indicates she wants to return to the wagon for the night, he stands and takes her arm, leading her back inside. She thinks that's that, but before he heads outside again, he pauses and says with his back to her, "They're not my friends, and I don't drink and whore."

It's dark and he isn't facing her so she lets herself grin; this is the first step. "Oh?" is all she says though. "So sometimes you drink, and sometimes you whore, but never both at the same time, is that it?"

He coughs; the sound is half a laugh. "You've got quite a mouth on you for a princess."

"And you're pretty boring for a criminal, or whatever you are."

The words seem to sober him. "You have no idea," he says, more to himself than her, and then he disappears, leaving her to smile to herself in the darkness of the wagon and contemplate her next move.

On the seventh day she sees him without the scarf covering his face. She wakes in the middle of the night, her heart pounding in her throat; the images of her dream are already fading into oblivion but the creeping feeling of dread persists. She opens her eyes and stares up into the blackness of the wagon, and then the flap to the entrance opens, moonlight spilling through, and he enters, holding something wet in his hands.

He notices that she is awake right away; he opens his mouth, then closes it. He has a nice facial structure, she thinks, very even and smooth, his jaw strong, his nose far more aristocratic than hers, and she's supposed to be the royal. He doesn't look like a common thug, and that's just another thing to make her believe there is more to this than ransoming her for gold.

She must not let him think she cares much—if he thinks she is silly and insipid, all the better. "You have a handsome face," she says in as light a tone as she can, trying to sound like she's teasing. "I thought you all wore scarves because you were ugly or something."

He scowls but does not respond; it could be a trick of the shifting darkness but she thinks there might be a bit of red in his cheeks. He is holding the cloth he usually wears over his face; he must have just washed it. He hangs it up in a corner of the wagon and when he turns back around to find her still staring at him, his scowl grows more pronounced and the red becomes more noticeable on his cheeks.

"Go back to sleep," he snaps, and she complies.

He wears the scarf a lot less after that, and usually only when someone else is around. She figures he wasn't supposed to let her see his face, but now that she has, there is no point in hiding it anymore. It looked uncomfortable anyway, always speaking with something covering his mouth.

Perhaps that is why he starts talking to her more afterwards; he must be bored, sitting around watching her all day as the wagon creaks on. The air is growing colder still and they gave her a thick woolen coat, but even with it she wakes up shivering in the mornings. Her breath starts to come out in puffs of white, and when she finds him smoking outside once she stands next to him and blows out her own fake swirls of smoke. He is unable to completely hide his smirk at that.

It isn't much at first, just the occasional question about what she would prefer, fish or vegetable stew, or an offhand comment about how she must hate this or that due to her life of privilege, but then he starts saying other things, about the weather and the city they left behind and even once the color of her hair ("I always thought the princess was blond, not ginger"), and Petra thinks he's making it even easier than she dared hope.

"You're higher than all of them," she says to him nearly two weeks after they left the capital. They travel slowly, so if they are going where she thinks they are, they should be reaching the edge of the kingdom—and whatever fate is in store for her—within another week or so.

"Higher?" He raises an eyebrow. "I'm shorter than all of them, in case that blindfold had longer-lasting effects than anyone anticipated."

He speaks like he's had a proper education before, though he seems to want to forget that by littering his everyday speech with curse words. She props her chin on her fists, still connected by a loose rope, and studies him.

"You're stuck watching the captive, which I would think makes you lower-ranked, but if you consider that the captive is the princess of the kingdom…" She shrugs. "And like you said, you're short. I've seen the way some of the men look at me. They would probably try to overpower you to get to me anyway if you weren't someone more important than them. Also this isn't actually relevant, but you keep your nails clean."

He blinks at her and for one moment she thinks she gave too much away—but then he just shakes his head and looks away. "You aren't what I expected the princess to be like."

"You aren't what I expected a kidnapper to be like either," she admits.

The next day he removes the bindings on her wrists and no one complains, further proving her suspicions. She sits outside next to him by the campfire and tells him a story about the origin of mankind her mother told her when she was young.

"The queen told you this?" he says skeptically when she finishes. He is smoking again and she's never liked the scent, but somehow she doesn't mind it in the cold air up north under the stars, sitting by a warm fire with someone she should probably hate. The other men are further off, and it's been so long she took notice of them that she no longer sees their stares.

"What, you don't think she's capable of telling stories?"

"She doesn't seem the type."

It is quiet for a moment, the silence heavy with unspoken words, and she knows he wants to ask her the same questions about her life she wants to ask about his—but that's dangerous territory, too dangerous even for her to tread, so she steers the conversation back to safer topics. She's already noticing things she shouldn't anyway, like the pale curve of his cheek she wants to trace with her fingers or the enticing way his throat bobs when he speaks, and she should try her best not to add to those distractions.

She becomes accustomed to her life as a captive and in some ways, it's not so bad—she isn't freezing to death every night, she can walk and speak freely, and her companion is an intriguing mystery that manages to properly hold her attention when she isn't keeping track of all the little details that could be the difference between escape and further captivity. Everything has become routine, and she never expects the chance to disappear until it is suddenly shoved before her face.

They make camp in the forest outside another small town, and once again he stays behind as everyone else heads for the taverns and brothels. It doesn't fully hit her how much he accidentally began to trust her until he leaves camp for a moment, presumably to gather more wood for the fire or to relieve himself, and she sits alone at the campfire for a full ten seconds before she stands and rushes to the supply wagons.

She'll need provisions, and water, and a compass, and—she takes a deep breath and forces her mind to go blank before she can panic; she grabs as many things as she can think of that she'll be able to carry in one small bag. Her hands are steady, even if her thoughts are not, and she ticks seconds off in her head. She's already taken too long, and she doesn't know if she'll be able to lose him in the woods on her way to town, so she picks up one last pouch of coins—the heft feels solid in her fingers—and stows it away, slings the bag over her back, and slips into the forest in the opposite direction her companion went.

The trees are silent and still around her; she takes care to step lightly, but she still feels the cold and empty world around her is watching. It hasn't snowed yet but there is frost coating the ground and branches, and she wraps her coat more tightly around herself, mapping out the different routes she can take to the town in her mind and how she will get back to the capital down south after that.

She does not see or hear any other living creatures but herself, so she's completely taken unawares when someone steps out from behind a tree a few paces away.

It's him; of course it is. He looks at her, something flickering in his eyes, but she can't tell what it is. "I thought so," he says, and his tone sounds almost resigned.

Petra stares at him and waits for him to grab her, to tie her up again and lead her back to the camp—but he does nothing. "What are you waiting for?"

He has a bundle of wood under one arm; he drops it to the ground and pulls a knife out of seemingly nowhere. She holds her breath, then arches her eyebrow in confusion when he only nicks himself lightly with it. The thin slash of red is stark against his pale skin and he wipes the blade against the bark of a tree before replacing it.

"You got a hold of that knife and put up a fight. When you tell the authorities what happened, don't describe me to them," he says. His eyes are dark, something like a storm moving in their depths, and she can't figure out what he's thinking at all. "You were raised to believe in things like honor—honor this."

If he's letting her go, then there is no doubt she will, no doubt she will keep his face a secret, but—"Why?" she asks. She should be going now, she should be walking away before he changes his mind, but her feet stay rooted to the spot and her breath comes out unevenly.

"What are you waiting for?" he echoes her own words back at her.

She looks at the way his jaw clenches, the way his eyes are fixed firmly on the trees behind her, and lets the pieces fall in place. "I think you like me more than you should," she breathes, "and you don't like what they're planning to do with me."

She knows she is right, even though he does not react to her words. _"Go," _is all he says.

There is a lot more to this than she will ever understand, but perhaps she will start searching when she gets back; perhaps one day she will find out. "Thank you," she says, finally beginning to walk again. When she passes him, she pauses, then reaches over and presses her lips to his cheek. His skin is warm despite the cold. "You should tell me your name," she whispers before withdrawing, and something in him seems to sigh at the words.

"Levi," he says. The syllables tumble from his lips like he's trying only halfheartedly to hold them back. "They call me Levi, princess."

She smiles at him and makes a decision; if she honors his secret, he will honor hers. "Don't call me princess. Just call me by my name—Petra."

Before he can react, she turns and disappears into the trees.

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><p>The journey back to the capital is long, but it takes less time than her trip up north and she becomes a priority the moment she walks into the town's local law enforcement station to announce her presence and identity. She tries to forget the past few weeks completely until she is ready to think about them, but they weigh heavily on her mind the entire journey, at the gates of the capital city, on the road up to the palace, and even as she walks into the throne room again and curtsies to the king and queen.<p>

"We're so relieved you're alright, dear," the queen cries, immediately rushing to envelop her in a hug. "When they told us you were safe—I'm so grateful—they haven't hurt you, have they?"

"They didn't hurt me. I'm fine," Petra says, returning the embrace. "I'm good as long as Princess Historia is."

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><p><em>AN: I didn't get to explain in the fic but basically Levi works for Kenny and Kenny/his people want the princess for pretty much the same reason the MP want Eren and Historia. If you're confused about the ending just let me know off anon/guest review and I'll try to explain._


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